Biden: Gaffes, gyrating gums, go-to guy

Loose lips sink campaigns for President, and Joe Biden blew himself out of the water in 1988 and 2008 runs for White House, the second time out when he tried to flatter then-Sen. Barack Obama.

“I mean you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy: I mean, that’s storybook, man,” Biden told the New York Observer. He was apologizing moments after announcing.

But a very different Biden — smart, amusing, blue collar-grounded and on-message — showed up for 2007-2008 debates of the Democratic field. Obama tapped him as running mate. It took work, but Biden stayed disciplined even when debating Sarah Palin.

It’s this Biden, Democrats hope, who’ll show up in the breach this week to stem movement away from the Democratic ticket after President Obama’s sub-par debate performance last week. A lot rides on his debate with Rep. Paul Ryan.

Of late, though, it’s been the long-winded, gaffe-a-matic Biden heard on the campaign trail. Trying to denounce Republicans’ obstructionism in Congress, for instance, he talked about “the middle class that’s been buried the last four years.”

It’s not exactly a message you expect from an incumbent. Biden has also displayed a particular penchant for the innocent, unintended sexual innuendo.

“Folks, I can tell you I’ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately,” he told one campaign audience. On another occasion, alluding to Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speak-softly-but-carry-a-big-stick admonition, Biden declared: “I promise you. The President has a big stick.”

Biden was recently surrounded by student athletes at Newport High School in New Hampshire. Asked what sport they played, several girls in the group replied: “We’re cheerleaders.”

“Guess what, the cheerleaders in college are the best athletes in college,” Biden effused. “You think I’m joking, they’re almost all gymnasts. The stuff they do on hard wood, it blows my mind.”

Biden is a political warhorse. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972 — the year of Richard Nixon’s reelection landslide — at the age of 29, barely meeting the age requirement when sworn in the following January.

He approached “Old Bull” status in the Senate, chairing two major committees on Capitol Hill, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As chairman, however, he has been so long-winded that freshman Sen. Barack Obama reacted to a Biden monologue at a 2005 hearing by passing a note to aide Robert Gibbs, saying: “Shoot me now.”

“Joe Biden of Delaware resembled a parody of a bloviating politician, talking for 24 of the 30 minutes allotted for his initial questions,” wrote Jeffrey Toobin, recalling the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in his book “The Nine.”

Still, Biden is loved by many of his former Senate colleagues — he has raised money for them, while Obama raises money for Obama — and instinctively identifies with his blue-collar, Rust Belt roots growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Biden can be tough — and wise. He was a player on U.S.-Soviet missile negotiations in the 1980′s, and had a major role in defeating President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. He counseled Obama against a big troop “surge” in Afghanistan.

Still, as colleagues frequently say, “He’s Joe.” After being sworn in by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Biden declared: “Jill and I had the great honor of standing on that stage looking across at one of the great justices, Judge Stewart.”

Biden loves to tell stories of his childhood, but twisted one at a rally, saying: “My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be President of the United States, I could be, I could be Vice President.”

The most famous Biden gaffe? It came at the Affordable Care Act signing ceremony when Biden whispered in the ear of President Obama: “This is a big f—— deal.”

He learned that microphones nowadays can pick up the most private remark. As with many Biden gaffes, however, it turned out somehow endearing and spawned many a T-shirt.

The classic Washington, D.C., axiom is that a “gaffe” is when you blurt out the truth. So it was with Obama during a late night Seattle big-ticket fundraiser in 2008.

Biden told Democratic donors they would have to keep giving after the election in the form of support for unpopular measures to deal with the budding Great Recession.

“This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task,” he said. “It’s like the Augean stables, man. That is more than just, this is more than — think about it, literally, think about it — this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systematic problem we have with this economy.”

At a time when John McCain was describing Obama as untested and not ready for a foreign crisis, Biden served up red meat for the Republican campaign, adding:

“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy . . . Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

The running mate apologized to the man he once introduced to a rally as “Barack America.” He was, as always, forgiven on grounds of warmth, backstage wisdom and — a favorite phrase — “my word as a Biden.”

Still, was it an oversight, when Biden showed up in this year Seattle to raise money for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that the Northwest press corps was barred from the premises?